US troops pay the price for an uncertain victory in Kandahar

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Dand, just south of Kandahar city, is thought to be among the safer areas for US troops. Lieutenant Theinert was his company's first fatality in three monthsChris Hondros/Getty Images

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Brothers in arms: US troops prepare a memorial to Lieutenant Joseph TheinertChris Hondros

Jerome StarkeyKandahar

Last updated at 12:01AM, June 17 2010

No one realised Joe was dead. The soldiers walked on.

Lieutenant Joseph Theinert, 24, a star athlete and the king of his high school
prom, had jumped over a chest-high mud wall between two fields and stepped
on a homemade bomb. His body was hurled into a narrow ditch and was hidden
where it lay by the grapevines that grow in steep, undulating rows along
man-made mounds that corrugate the fields.

Three American soldiers and an Afghan interpreter had all climbed the wall in
front of him. Captain Dylan Mixson had walked around the side of the wall
and was